


sakazuki

by epiattic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Yakuza, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassination Attempt(s), Assassins & Hitmen, Dubious Morality, Fluff, Japan, Kissing, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Linear Narrative, Organized Crime, Period-Typical Homophobia, Reunions, Sexual Content, Sheith Big Bang 2017, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 21:02:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12176532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiattic/pseuds/epiattic
Summary: Shirogane Takashi is dead.Keith, an assassin working within the dangerous yakuza underworld, knows this better than anyone because he killed him himself. Once a prominent member of the Galra, Kyoto’s most ruthless gang, Shiro is now just a corpse with a hole in it where Keith plunged his knife. Which is really too bad, given the way Keith feels...felt...about him.Now while grappling with his desire to escape Kyoto’s vicious underbelly, Keith is suddenly presented with a startling question: what if, somehow, Shiro isn’t as dead as he thought?





	1. 序

**Author's Note:**

> [please check out the beautiful art that goes with this fic!](http://witches-nighttime.tumblr.com/post/165690267282/one-two-three-weve-reached-the-end-of-the)
> 
>  
> 
> This fic was a long journey for me. Because of personal reasons it was an uphill battle the whole way through, and i never would’ve made it if not for a few really special people. First, a shoutout to [nein](http://archiveofourown.org/users/nein)/[develei](https://twitter.com/develei) for talking through this story with me and suggesting a yakuza au to me in the first place, because i never would’ve thought of it otherwise. Next, to the kogang, the shklance gc, and all my twitter mutuals for listening to me bemoan my complete inability to do this fic justice for the past few months. 
> 
> Last, and most importantly, thank you thank you thank you thank you to my amazing, wonderful, talented, and incredibly patient and understanding artist [witches-nighttime](http://witches-nighttime.tumblr.com/). I don’t know how you managed to be so supportive of me when i just kept dropping the ball, but this fic is only here today because of you. Between your plot/story suggestions, your endless patience, your words of encouragement, and your absolutely gorgeous artwork, you were the real mastermind behind this fic, so thank you so much. We did it!
> 
> Also please don’t take anything in this fic as factually accurate. I laughed at my pages and pages of research while tearing them to shreds as I wrote this fic.
> 
> With that out of the way, please enjoy this culmination of my blood and tears.

1.

Shirogane Takashi is dead.

Dawn splashes against the banks of the Kamogawa River with a kind of gentleness that seems incongruous. It hurts Keith’s eyes. He can’t even see the sun yet, not over the rise of the blocky buildings, over the hazy shadows of the distant mountains, but the light shows him a dried red splotch on the curve of his thumb. He clamps his jaw shut against the rattling that tries to wrack its way out of his lungs and rubs the color away.

Shirogane Takashi is dead.

Keith hasn’t stopped shaking yet. He’s a glass too-full of water on the kitchen table during an earthquake, except the tectonic plates under Kyoto are still this morning. These tremors are self-manufactured. He hasn’t felt this way since he started this job, five years younger at least in a physical sense.

He leans his forearms against the railing of the bridge to attempt to steady himself, and looks at the water running below. It stormed last night, and the water is much frothier than its usual easy flow. He feels sick, and measures the distance between here and the surface with his eyes.

The violent grind of his teeth has him turning towards the road behind him instead. He can, _should_ , take this road here. Follow its dark path out of the city. Go someplace faraway, some anonymous countryside town, like up in quiet Hokkaido. He’s always wanted to go to Hokkaido. It should be easy. It’s not like Keith is attached anywhere. (Not anymore.) He doesn’t belong to any family and his relationships with his allies are tenuous at best. Everyone is a client or a victim or unimportant. The strings holding him here in this city are spiderweb-thin and flimsy as paper.

Personal feelings aside it’d probably be good for him to hightail it out of the city anyway. He’d made an amateur mistake. Worse than amateur. Any person with an ounce of common sense knows better than to leave the murder weapon at the scene of the crime. It’s not the cops he’s worried about. His client has a stranglehold on more than enough high-ranking officers to ensure his safety even if he had decapitated someone in the middle of Teramachi. What they can’t do is protect him from retaliation.

If they come after him it’s his own fault. If they come after him, he deserves it. The truth of this shudders through him and it’s hard to keep clamped down on the scream that builds hot and expansive in his chest.

It’s because Shirogane Takashi is dead, and Keith killed him.

 

2.

Shirogane Takashi wore a suit that fit him too well.

It was the first thing that Keith noticed about him, because the other notable things had already been noted. Memorized. The photograph Keith had had of him in the file he’d been sent had long been burned to ashes out of a fear that his apartment might be searched if anything went awry, but its features were settled comfortably in his mind. Black hair, with a sweep of white in the front (from stress, they said). Hard but handsome features, striking and incredibly solid. Warm, gray eyes. A scar across the nose. Missing several fingers on his right hand. Ridiculously tall at a few centimeters shy of two meters. Broad, as well, with the kind of muscles that only came with practical use.

They didn’t call him the Champion for nothing.

When Shirogane walked into the room, the first time Keith ever saw him in person, it wasn’t any of those things that drew his attention. It was first his suit. Delectably tailored. It made no secret of his solidity and his muscles. Keith had a passing thought, something about being held down, but this wasn’t the setting. After that, it was his smile. People all around were smiling, some drunk already, but none of them smiled like Shirogane. None of them smiled with the genuineness of someone who wasn’t just there to show their teeth and claw their way up.

Shirogane sailed through the crowd, greeting, bowing, laughing. Then his eyes snapped to Keith. Zeroed in. Observed with a smile, and followed with a wave. Left-handedly, Keith noted. The other hand was stuffed into his pocket.

Keith bowed in response, deeply.

This was the arrangement: new initiates in the group were under the care of a high-ranking member. A mentor, a guide. Keith had found out just yesterday that his was to be the illustrious Shirogane Takashi.

An unbelievable stroke of luck, seeing as the very same Shirogane Takashi was Keith’s next target.

It was the only reason he was in this room, after all. Keith despised the Galra. He hated everything they stood for. From the time he’d first started hanging around his _bousouzoku_ back in Osaka, the small-time motorcycle gang made up of teenagers with no futures, he’d heard of their exploits. The yakuza was bad, sure. Anyone on the street could tell you that. But at least most of them had pride in their role as the _ninkyou dantai_ , the chivalrous organizations known to send aid where the government was slow or provide protection where the police couldn’t. Keith could respect a world that ran on principles like protection and provision, even if the methods were dirty and the people despicable.

The Galra, with their infamous _oyabun_ Zarkon, were a different story. Keith had never known another syndicate so hell-bent on gaining power without cause. He knew, between the lines, that everything in this community was fueled by greed. But no one else showed it off quite the same way that the Galra did. No one else was quite so callous about their killings. No one else robbed the poor quite as dry and left the unfortunate quite as desperate, just to bolster their leader’s bank accounts.

Keith hadn’t liked this job when he had taken it. Keith was not a spy. He was a hired killer. A murderer, plain and simple. Infiltrating a syndicate seemed dangerous at best. But the offer of finding a way to deconstruct the organization from the inside and take out their precious Champion with it had been too sweet. Plus who could say no to the money? The Galra’s rival gang Marmora was promising him more cash than he’d ever seen in his life. As someone who knew how unforgiving Japan was to the homeless, as someone who’d been tossed around a faulty orphan institution system and seen exactly how much support this country gave to people who needed it most, he knew to snatch up opportunities when they came.

And this opportunity was also an opportunity to deal a huge blow to the Galra by crawling inside their ranks before taking out their key player, their shining star. If you believed the whisperings at the ends of dark bars, Shirogane Takashi was indestructible. He was strong and well-protected. No one could get a hit on him from afar. It would take someone on the inside to take him out. Outside of Zarkon’s innermost circles, the Champion was the most important member of the Galra.

Indestructible, perhaps. But Keith had never met a person he couldn’t kill.

The result of this was that a few strings had been pulled, connections had been made, and Keith found himself sitting in a wide hall owned by the Galra where his initiation ceremony was beginning. The banners hung from the walls, respecting the emperor and the gods prized by the yakuza. There were lots of higher-ups here. Lots of people for him to bow to. Lots of people whose ribcages he wished he could slip his knife into. It wouldn’t have been too hard for him to rig up some explosives and have this whole place in flames, but Keith didn’t kill non-targets, as a rule. That would make him like the Galra.

Instead he sat with the other initiates and listened to old men give speeches, listened to the stuffy speaking styles and the dramatic presentations. Keith wasn’t one for all this pomp and circumstance. It was part of the reason why he’d never joined a group himself. While he’d watched the other boys his age in his _bousouzoku_ biker gang get picked up by this group or that group, Keith had taken a few steps back into the shadows. Considered his options. His first kill had been in the defense of a woman backed into an alleyway by a man who didn’t know when to quit. He didn’t like it, the blood on his hands, but the woman’s husband had found him and paid him the next day.

For awhile the work weighed heavy on him, but Keith had a talent. He was good enough at what he did to be discerning, and only took jobs that appealed to his standards. And he got paid. Before long he’d been able to pack up the few belongings from his cockroach-ridden Osaka apartment and move to Kyoto. He had been able to trade in his juvenile road bike, custom-painted with the bold red spokes of the _kyokujitsu-ji_ rising sun on its gas tank that he’d paid for by scraping together his savings from working part-time at Lawson, for a real motorcycle. He’d graduated from his ratty oil-stained overcoat to a well-tailored suit and a nondescript tie, despite never having graduated high school.

Keith hated the job. But it kept him alive. And it kept others alive. And if he had to be the one to do the killing, then so be it.

When the speeches were over, then came the sake. There were two cups on the table before Keith. Only one belonged to him.

The other belonged to a pair of shoulders so broad that they seemed to take up Keith’s entire vision when their owner sat down across from him. Keith refocused his vision and met the man’s eyes, which crinkled kindly before he bowed across the table at Keith.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m Shirogane Takashi. You can call me Shiro.”

Keith matched his bow, and then pushed himself a few extra degrees. “It’s nice to meet you too. Keith.”

“Funny name,” Shiro said, and then tried it out a few times under his breath. Keith, well aware of his name and all its phonological implications, found himself blushing.

“Dad liked foreigners,” Keith explained, looking away.

Shiro leaned forward across the table, interested. “Are you half?”

Keith had no real desire to get into what he was. He’d found himself taking knuckles to the face enough times in relation to the matter as a kid, so discussing it now and here wasn’t one of his priorities.

“Something like that,” was his answer.

Shiro might’ve continued his line of questioning had the sake decanter not been placed before him at that moment. Keith knew that the sake inside was expensive; he’d seen the black bottles carried in earlier. A _daiginjo_ , something of much higher quality than any of the initiates here could reasonably afford, probably. The room went quiet and watchful as the sake was poured.

When Shiro picked up the decanter, he did it with his left hand. He used his right hand to steady the ceremonial _sakazuki_ cup, and Keith caught a glimpse of gleaming metal. Three of his fingers were prosthetics, and very blatantly so. The originals had probably been ordered cut off in a _yubitsume_ ceremony, where members who displeased their bosses were ordered to gift them parts of their fingers. Keith had to wonder how someone so apparently disappointing had still managed to climb so high in the organization, and at such a young age at that.

Shiro poured more into his own cup than Keith’s, as per the ceremony. It was representative of his power. He was Keith’s senior, someone to provide protection and guidance but also commanded respect and loyalty, and their relationship as such was about to be solidified, permanently.

At least that was the idea. Keith held these ceremonies in little regard.

Shiro picked up his cup. “For you,” he said too quietly for their audience to hear, and nodded for Keith to do the same.

Keith looked down into the clear liquid, and then picked his up as well. Without breaking eye contact, he raised the cup to his lips as Shiro did the same. They sipped. The warm alcohol was sweet against his tongue and a hot tickle in his stomach, inextricably linked to Shiro’s eyes on him.

They placed their cups back on the table. Shiro reached forward with his left hand and slid Keith’s cup before himself, and Keith did the same with Shiro’s. Now they traded drinks to forge their bond. Sealing their souls, or something like that. Keith lifted Shiro’s cup to his mouth, and Shiro lifted Keith’s.

They were linked forever, now. Or at least until Shiro was dead.

 

 3.

What bothers Keith most about the situation, he thinks as he sinks lower into bathtub, is that Zarkon is still out there.

The hot steam curls around Keith’s forehead, his eyes barely above the waterline. He wonders if he gasps inwards right now, will the water will pour down his windpipe and fill his lungs? He holds his breath until his chest burns and his heart pounds, and then finally shoves himself upright to draw in the too-moist air of the bathroom. He blinks, and lets his head clunk back against the tub’s lip.

It was not Shiro who should’ve been his target. Keith knows that. Keith _knew_ that but money is persuasive to someone who’s only ever known the filth of a sidewalk to sleep on. To someone who wants to take down a dirty organization by any means possible.

Shiro was not the problem. Shiro was never the problem. Shiro may have been a support column holding up the den of immorality, which implicated him in its own way, but in the end it was Zarkon who had founded the group, who keeps it running on the same underhanded, violent schemes.

Keith has met him, more than once. The man lives in an enormous property on the outskirts of the city which he leaves only to personally see to his revenue or to encourage inspiration (read: fear) in his subordinates. The first time Keith had seen him, he’d unflinchingly shot his secretary in the foot for an accidental and brief overlap in his schedule.

Despite the heat of the bath, hot enough to turn his skin a bright pink, Keith shivers when he thinks of Zarkon. Most groups content themselves with money laundering, racketeering, even drugs and weapons dealings. Zarkon’s got his fingers in those things, too, of course, but his violent nationalistic ideologies, his dark methods of dealing with resistance like arson and unwarranted slaughter, his underage prostitution rings, and so on, and so forth, don’t sit well with Keith at all.

He should’ve killed Zarkon instead. Not that he ever had the opportunity. By the time Marmora was demanding a product to show for their money, Keith had only managed to wriggle his way so far into the structure. He had completed his job, but not the one he wanted.

Keith drops down underwater so that his entire head is submerged, shuts his eyes, and holds his breath.

 

4.

The bruised skin on Keith’s cheek twinged, and the cut on his arm stung, but that pain didn’t feel nearly as deep and driving as the ache in his knuckles. That was good. A good pain. Keith knew he had inflicted more damage than he had received, and at the end of the day that was all that mattered.

He hurt a bit elsewhere too, though he couldn’t tell you why. His chest ached. He’d gotten into the fight because some passing asshole had seen him come out of the real estate office that provided cover for the inner workings of this branch of the Galra. The same asshole had seen the way Keith was dressed, what Keith looked like, and came to a conclusion. The asshole had then proceeded to badmouth the Galra, starting in first on Keith and then moving up to spew shit about the one they call the Champion.

Keith had snapped then, and not before. He knew that if he wanted to pass off as a genuine member of the group he would’ve had to do _something_. A nameless, inconsequential asshole wasn’t allowed to get away talking like that. Not if Keith was a real Galra. Not if Keith wanted to prove his loyalty to the family.

Did Keith want to be busting some guy’s nose on the Galra’s behalf? No. Not for his own name, and not for the Champion’s, and not for the group. Did he do it anyway? Yes.

But now he was slouched here against the side of the building at 2 am, a lit cigarette between his lips. The other guy had long since fled. Keith was just trying to draw up the strength to get home. It hurt when he breathed, and he’d already checked to find a dark bruise blossoming over the bottom right of his ribcage.

It was just his luck then that the backdoor to the office opened. Keith’s eyes flickered up as he took another puff of his cigarette, and found himself face-to-face with the Champion himself.

“Hey, Keith,” he greeted, squinting at him in the darkness. “What are you doing out here?”

Keith looked away from him, towards the main street. “Smoking.”

“Yeah, I can see—oh.” Shiro’s half-joking retort was cut short by his own jerk backwards when he came closer and caught sight of Keith’s face. Maybe the dried blood and the bruising was worse than Keith thought, if it had the Champion himself caught up in that kind of reaction.

Keith didn’t budge as Shiro came closer.

“What happened?” Shiro asked. “Are you okay?”

Keith didn’t answer, but that was because he was holding completely still when one of Shiro’s hands came up to cup around his jaw. Shiro thumbed at Keith’s nose, and Keith could feel the congealed blood flaking off. The skin burned underneath, but Keith wasn’t going to display something like pain to Shiro.

Especially not when Shiro was leaning closer to get a better view in the darkness. Keith was suddenly hyperaware of the warmth of his hand, of the spacing of his eyelashes, of the way Shiro’s scar curled over his nose. He tried to focus instead on the feel of the cigarette that he was now holding at his side between his fingers. It seemed like a safer alternative. Keith knew from experience that sometimes these big, important men didn’t care what they stuck their dicks into, but some of them were just as likely to pound your face into the asphalt for so much as breathing on them in a way that made them think you could be a willing participant in that sort of thing.

“Who did this?” Shiro asked, finally pulling back.

“Some punk.” Keith shrugged, and raised the cigarette to his lips again. “He was talking shit. I left him worse than he left me.”

Shiro frowned, clearly disappointed. “I don’t know what you used to do in your biker gang, but—”

“He was talking about you and the Galra,” Keith went on. “He called you a faggot. I couldn’t let him get away with that.”

Shiro straightened up now, his eyes shrewd on Keith. Keith pretended not to feel intimidated under his gaze. Keith could kill men quicker than they could see him, but something about the gray in Shiro’s eyes made Keith feel like he should be gathering up the pieces of himself and tying them together more tightly, or presenting an untarnished surface. He didn’t have one of those.

Shiro rattled the doorknob again and opened the door. “Come inside,” he said, in a way that gave Keith no room for argument.

Keith stomped out his cigarette on the asphalt and let Shiro usher him inside the still-lit building. He could hear people around; there was raucous laughter from the basement, but Shiro instead steered him to the back rooms. They ended up in the kitchen, where Shiro pulled out a chair as an invitation for Keith to sit down, and then rifled through a few of the drawers before returning to Keith with a first aid kit and a wet towel.

The towel was rough, but the brisk way he ran it over Keith’s face felt like a mother cat licking at its kitten. They were silent as Shiro disinfected Keith’s cuts, even when Keith embarrassingly flinched at the sting of alcohol. Shiro frowned the entire time, as though genuinely concerned, and his touch left Keith feeling strangely cared for.

No one had ever tended to Keith’s wounds. Even in the orphanage in Osaka most of the workers had their hands too full to help out the dirty little Korean boy who ran too fast and fell down and split his knee open. Who started fights with kids three times his age. Who stole bikes and rode them until he crashed them into the river. No one had ever put bandages over Keith’s cuts for him. No one had asked to see the bruise on his ribs because he’d winced when he’d shifted. No one had ever tried to keep Keith alive and healthy except Keith himself.

The sensation was strange. It made him a little lightheaded. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, or where to look. When Shiro spoke it made it less difficult.

“Try not to go rushing into things as much,” Shiro said. “I know you were protecting our honor. But there’s no use in making enemies that we don’t need.”

Keith’s anger made to flare, but something in the way Shiro said it was gentle and genuine. Kind. As if he wasn’t saying it to serve himself but to actually guide Keith. Keith looked into his face again, and found a smile playing at his lips.

“That being said, I’m sure you did an impressive number on him,” Shiro went on. “I’ll bet he’s not going to mess with the Galra again anytime soon.”

Shiro sat back and looked at Keith. Keith looked at Shiro.

“You okay?” Shiro asked. 

“Yeah,” Keith replied, and as much as he tried to cling to his glare he couldn’t. Not here, in Shiro’s presence. Something about it was soothing, and Keith didn’t like that. Keith was spit out alone into the world as an angry flame and the threat that something as simple as a gentle hand and some kind words could calm him into candlelight was unsettling.

“Let me take you home,” Shiro said, standing.

Keith stood too, and quickly. “No need. I’ve got my bike here.”

“If you’re sure,” is how Shiro answered, and Keith didn’t know why he was surprised he wasn’t getting pushback, but he was.

“I’m sure,” Keith replied, and made his way to the door. 

“Goodnight,” Shiro called after him.

“Goodnight,” Keith said in the doorway. Then he hesitated. “And thanks, Shiro.”

 

5.

Keith’s work phone buzzes twice from his bedside table.

For not the first time he considers hurling it against the wall. Smashing it under his foot. Riding over it with his motorcycle. It’s a flip phone with a prepaid SIM and he knows how difficult it is for people to get their hands on elusive series of digits that will lead their queries into his inbox. He could easily rid himself of it in a less violent way, but the thought of it with its glossy glass cracked and its circuitry spilled pleases him, though only in his imagination. He knows, realistically, he won’t get rid of this phone.

Instead he flips open the phone and checks the message.

 _Need a job?_  

It’s an old regular.

He knows what it’ll be like. There’s a guy in so-and-so syndicate who’s been taking my taking my money. The _oyabun_ of that place has been fucking my wife behind my back. These guys are terrorizing businesses under my protection.

Keith doesn’t have the patience for it right now. Every day feels like he’s holding a burning match waiting for the fire to reach his fingertips.

 _Not really_ , he replies.

The text unsettles him more than he thought it would. Even though he’s answered it, something about it seems to burn in his peripherals. He’s struck again by the idea that he doesn’t want to be here anymore. But where else is there to go?

To the bar. He gets up off his bed and shrugs on his jacket. His feet guide him absently to the corner stool in a nearby dive. He’s here for alcohol, not socialization, and he thinks he makes that pretty clear with his shoulders hunched forward and his side pressed up against one wall. A mug of beer from the tap is placed before him, and Keith drinks freely.

Too late he remembers that the last time he drank beer was on the bank of a river with his heart in his throat and a pair of gray eyes watching him like he was a masterpiece in a museum.

This thought has filled his mind too much like the mouthful of beer he just took overcrowded his throat when he finds the stool next to his own suddenly occupied. 

“Hey,” comes a low voice beside him.

Keith doesn’t know how these types find him. It’s not like he frequents gay bars or wears flamboyant patches on his jacket. He knows that in other places in the world those kinds of things are acceptable, normal even. Here men aren’t _gay_ , though. They’re just sexually available to other people who have dicks, and apparently the kinds of guys who are into that can pick that out by just looking at him.

Keith nearly nails the guy in the sternum. He’s not in the mood. He’s never really been in the mood for this, but especially now he doesn’t think he’ll ever be in the mood again.

He does his best to ignore, but the talking continues.

“You wanna come somewhere with me? It’ll be worth your time.”

This guy isn’t even worth a single glance but he gives it anyway. He looks every inch the sleazy scumbag his voice and his come-ons Keith’s mental image provided.

There had been a time in his life when Keith would’ve bitten. Especially on an off day. He would’ve done it on a whim, for the simple sake of doing something other than going home to an empty apartment. But right now the very thought of touching someone else’s skin sends his gut roiling. Keith never wants to be touched by another pair of hands again. 

“No thanks,” he says, and lifts off the bar stool, leaving his beer mostly untouched and the last of his tolerance laying there on the counter.

 

6. 

Shiro’s apartment was sterile. The chrome surface of the refrigerator gleamed unadorned. The marble countertop was home to a single decorative bowl. There wasn’t a single morsel of food in sight, and somehow Keith felt like if he opened the refrigerator door he wouldn’t find much other than a six pack of Asahi.

Not that he was one to judge. The inside of his refrigerator wasn’t much different. The real difference laid in how he could almost make out his own eyes in the reflection of himself in the dark wood flooring. How the genkan was full of well-ordered designer shoes. How one leather couch faced a TV bigger than the front door and the other an enormous window with a shimmering view of _Shijo_ Street. Most of the lights were off, except for a lamp in the corner of the living room that softened all the dark minimalist woodwork with its dull white wine glow.

Keith left his scuffed shoes alongside ones that shone with a, “Sorry for the intrusion,” muttered under his breath.

“Make yourself at home,” said Shiro, already washing his hands at the stainless steel sink. There wasn’t a single plate left inside nor the impression that one had ever laid in it at all since its creation.

Keith wandered to the couch and sat down. The surface was firm, and it didn’t seem like it would be useful for lounging on. Maybe Shiro used the other one more, but Keith doubted it as he took note of how the ride of his pant leg and the fall of his socks revealed a sliver of pale skin between them. He was reminded again of how his suit didn’t quite fit him right. How his body was more used to the shadows than to be stuffed into expensive fibers and paraded around.

Shiro rounded the island that served as a partition between the kitchen and the living room with two whisky glasses in hand, ice clinking inside. His coffee table was simple, exquisite, and matched the couches, but he didn’t bother with coasters as he set the glasses on the table. Condensation pooled at their bases. The couch dipped as Shiro sat beside Keith.

“What did you want to talk about?” Keith asked.

When Shiro had invited Keith here it hadn’t been a surprise. They’d been eating ramen with a few of the guys after some business at the office, but as per their usual routine they two had sat at the end of the bar and sequestered themselves from the boisterous conversation to chat casually instead. This happened in a shockingly natural fashion nearly every time Keith and Shiro found themselves in the same place, which continued to leave Keith feeling unbalanced. At the end of their meal Shiro had told Keith that there was something he wanted to talk to Keith about, and if he didn’t mind coming to Shiro’s place for a bit, he would appreciate it.

Keith could have easily taken it as an opportunity. In this empty, antiseptic home no one would bother to look for Shiro until he was needed. No one knew that Keith was here except for the two of them. Keith’s knife rested ever-present against the small of his back. But he had decided to bide his time instead. Every day he spent here, he was gleaning more information. Some for Marmora, but mostly for himself. It had _nothing_ to do with Shiro’s kindness, or the warmth in Shiro’s eyes.

The more time Keith spent with Shiro, the more he was prone to convenient forgetfulness of his job, of who he _was_ , but he pushed that aside.

Shiro shrugged. “I just wanted to see how you’re adjusting. I know your life hasn’t been easy but all this stuff still catches me off-guard with how tough it is sometimes.”

Squinting at Shiro, Keith felt a strange anxiety bubble up in his stomach at the easygoing tone. He hadn’t known Shiro for very long, but something about him made Keith feel like he was in over his head in something. Bizarrely, it wasn’t unpleasant. “Most older members aren’t like you, are they?”

Shiro laughed, like he was trying to dig under Keith’s suspicious stare. “No, I’d say they probably aren’t.” He settled back into himself, and grabbed the two glasses off the table, handing one to Keith. He sniffed it. Nikka brand, maybe. “Does it bother you?”

“Not exactly,” Keith said, and his statement was punctuated by Shiro _clink_ ing their glasses together. The sound was clean and rang like a bell. Keith took a gulp, not breaking eye contact with Shiro over the top of their glasses as Shiro sipped.

“So?” Shiro asked once he’d lowered his glass again. “Doing okay?”

“I’m fine,” Keith said, unhesitating. It wasn’t something that crossed his mind, if he was to be honest. Whether he was doing okay or not. But it wasn’t in him to admit that he wasn’t, so the statement didn’t matter. It would be the same regardless. Keith took another mouthful of whiskey and let it burn on the way down.

Shiro was giving him a look when he glanced back up, a shrewd eyebrow raised and eyes roving in survey. “You’re a big mystery, aren’t you?”

Keith felt warmth rise in his cheeks, though he didn’t know why. Maybe it was the alcohol. “I’m not a mystery.”

Shiro’s drink was set down on the table with a bright tapping of ice against glass. The motion pulled him closer in to Keith, the stretch of his arm over the empty space in front of them drawing Keith’s eye to the broadness of his shoulders and the clean fit of his expensive suit. Keith polished off his drink and put his glass down too as Shiro straightened up.

“We’re family now. You know if you need anything, you can come to me,” Shiro said. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“I know,” Keith said. For some reason he felt the need to avert his eyes, so he fought back against himself and met Shiro’s gaze head-on.

Shiro’s voice dropped, soft and smooth with the smallest bit of a strain at its lowest notes. “I’ve got your back, Keith.”

There were so threads in the fabric that made up Keith that these words hooked into and pulled on that Keith was worried he’d get snagged, snarled up in this mess of emotion and outside forces that he couldn’t possibly contend with. He wanted to smooth it out like pulls in a sweater, but maybe snipping them out would be better.

“Thanks, Shiro,” is what he said in reply, and somehow his voice had grown soft to match. There was something inside him that was snarling and snapping, chomping at the bit, but it was all blanketed in this sense of calm encouraged by the light in Shiro’s gray eyes. Ever drawn to it, Keith leaned forward like he would towards text too small to read.

Shiro responded in kind, shifting closer. Suddenly things ignorable before amassed into something a little too large to bypass. Suddenly Keith’s mind was blank.

Neither of them were anything in the realm of drunk, Keith knew that, but the bitter twinge of alcohol on the edge of Shiro’s breath made it a little bit easier to pretend that they were. Pretend that his actions were somehow out of his conscious control, that his inhibitions were lowered due to an outside force, that he could write this off in a few hours’ time as the result of mind-altering chemicals and not something that came from within.

That was why he did it, almost certainly. That was why he stretched out, tilted his head up, until the side of his nose brushed against the side of Shiro’s. Until the puff of Shiro’s breath was on his own lips. Until he could feel the depleting air between them crackling like wildfire and lightning plasma. Close enough to shut his eyes, to feel the radiation of Shiro’s warmth off of his skin, something dangerous and heart-wrenching.

Shiro met him open, like he’d been waiting to swallow Keith whole the entire time. This didn’t put Keith off in the least. As a man who liked men in the underground of a society that found those like him unspeakable he was accustomed to having dominance displayed in a variety of ways. What he wasn’t expecting was the touch of Shiro’s hand on his cheek, soft and hovering like he was afraid to put too much pressure on him, a guiding and steadying force as he softened under Keith’s mouth and let him control their motions.

Startled by the submission Keith surged too hard into the kiss, but they fell into a quick balance as Shiro angled himself better and placed a cautionary hand on the jut of Keith’s hip. Everything that happened from then on was savoring and slow. The sweep of Shiro’s tongue through Keith’s mouth. The metallic bruising of his lips when Shiro pressed in hard. Shiro’s pleased huff of breath when Keith nipped him.

It was good. Keith’s body felt light, and he burned where Shiro touched him, on his hip, on his cheek, on the back of his neck. His mind went blank with it and he let it happen without a second thought.

So, it was awhile before Keith came to with the chilling realization that the man he was kissing had a pulse. That was all it took for him to pull himself away.

“I should go,” he said, and stood to leave, though his limbs felt sluggish, and he somehow found that there was a tug at the end of his arm. It gave as he pulled Shiro up with him, and they crashed into each other again, Keith’s mouth instinctively falling open at the proximity of Shiro’s. When they pulled apart, Keith tucked his face into Shiro’s neck and breathed in the all-consuming scent of his cologne.

“You drank,” Shiro murmured against Keith’s ear. “You should stay here tonight.”

The hopeful plea in his voice trickled down from there like liquid silver until it settled as a cold, dead weight in the pit of Keith’s stomach.

“Not tonight,” Keith said. He meant _not ever_ , but somehow the words twisted and changed on their way out. The idea that someday, someday, he could find himself in Shiro’s arms, in Shiro’s bed, was a delectable temptation he had to be smart enough to ignore right now, but his mouth, always faster than his brain, had a different approach.

Shiro, unperturbed, slid a hand from Keith’s shoulder down to the small of his back. It squeezed there, pressed Keith harder to him for just a millisecond, before releasing him entirely and stepping away. His other hand remained almost paternally at Keith’s shoulder as he looked him up and down.

“I’ll take you home,” Shiro said.

“No,” Keith replied. Immediate and hard and utterly without spare space to squeeze by.

Shiro didn’t raise a fuss, instead relenting to him. “Then let me know when you get home safe,” he said.

The chill in Keith’s stomach crawled up his spine. His guilt made him nauseous at all the worst times.

“I can handle myself,” he said the same way someone might shake their hand to dislodge a bug that landed on it.

“I know you can.” Shiro stepped in close fleetingly, briefly, to press his lips to Keith’s forehead. Keith suppressed a shudder. It wasn’t of revulsion. “Still, let me know.”

Having to part his body from Shiro’s felt like unsticking magnets, but Keith pulled with all his strength and turned away. His steps were purposely steady and measured. He put his effort into that instead of focusing on the swirl of emotion that wrought his gut.

“Goodnight,” he called over his shoulder. He didn’t turn his head because he knew that the image of Shiro standing there, shoulders broad and stance tall in the comfortably dim space of his meticulous apartment, backlit by the city lights outside the vast window, would sink into him like a hook and pull at him like a line.

“Goodnight,” he heard floating down to him from the window as he swung his leg over the seat of his bike on the street. He put his helmet on to block any further sounds and to limit the light hitting his retinas. He had to protect himself, because no one else had ever done that for him, and no one else ever would.

* * *

 

It was the first time they kissed, casual, and in private, but it wasn’t the last. Keith found himself sneaking them in between meetings in dark hallways and the cover of the bathroom, in silent alleyways at 4 am after drinking parties, on Shiro’s couch on a Sunday afternoon when he had nothing better to do than watch raindrops splatter against the glass window and then press his tongue between Shiro’s teeth.

“Stay over?” Shiro asked, voice too hopeful too and too trusting.

“Not tonight,” Keith said, every time.


	2. 破

1. 

Has Keith left his apartment today? It’s possible. But it’s also indeterminate. He’s schrodinger's assassin. Is he alive in there? He doesn’t know. Nobody does.

He checks his phone for the first time in what feels like days and finds that it’s 3 am. He doesn’t know what he’s been doing all this time. Staring at his ceiling, maybe. Listening to an ambulance outside. “We’re going through a red light, so please wait a moment,” one announces to the surrounding cars.

It’s not a calm self-imposed house arrest. There’s an itch under his skin like a two-day-old burn. Something out there is calling him, his unfinished business. Keith doesn’t half-ass jobs. Keith doesn’t leave ends loose. But he can’t put a name to the string that tugs insistently at his chest. He can’t follow it to its other end.

An answer comes.

 _No one can get a hold on you._ It’s from an unknown number. _Where are you? Shiro’s dead_.

And, immediately after:

_Zarkon wants you at the main house. Thursday. 8 pm._

Keith doesn’t know where a member of the Galra could’ve gotten his work phone’s number from, but people have connections and their connections have connections. If lines between him as a person and him as the owner of this phone have been drawn, it’s no mystery why Zarkon would want to see him. The mystery instead is why he hasn’t been sniped dead through his apartment window yet.

First, Keith thinks he won’t go. But the one sentence snags him. Flays him open. Bites sharp teeth into him and worries him down to nothing but the splintered pieces of his bones. _Shiro’s dead. Shiro’s dead. Shiro’s dead_.

Keith knows that Shiro’s dead. Keith has known that for longer than it’s been a fact. In a firm, concrete way Keith knows he has no one to blame but himself. In the abstract, there’s someone else Keith can push his hurt and anger onto. Someone deserving of his hate. So he does.

Does he need a gun? Does he know how to use a gun? No, and no. But he clears his bank account to buy a good one from a shady contact of a contact. The explosives seem like overkill but Keith has the fundamentals of this down at least. He’s set enough things on fire to know how destruction works. The rest of the money he shoves under his mattress for now.

The main house is going to be crawling, of course. This is not a private affair, and as such it’s not Keith’s domain. He comes to term with his odds in increments of canceling his lease on his apartment, of leaving a plastic convenience store bag full of money on his old friend Pidge’s doorstep, of donating almost every article of clothing in his closet to the homeless shelter.

He feels the empty sheath where his knife belonged at his back, and feels its ache like the knife is in his own gut.

He’s going. He’s going to meet with Zarkon.

 

2.

Keith and Shiro sat at the river’s edge, among young couples and groups of laughing twenty-somethings and foreigners squealing their delight in English at the crackle of sparklers. All these people, so carefree. All these people, so unaware. Keith cracked the tab on his can of beer and took a few solid mouthfuls.

The conversation passed between them easily. They were anonymous here in the dark with the lights glinting off the water. They melted in as part of the crowd. For an instance Keith imagined another life where meetings like this didn’t fill him with dread and foreboding. Where two people conversing on the bank of a river were free exist as they were.

When Shiro tipped his head back to laugh, Keith watched the way the lights of the city reflected off the river gave the stretch of his throat an ethereal glow. It seemed, for a moment, that if Keith tried to nick the skin there he would find it impenetrable. There was no method for taking down this invincible man. There was no weapon he could use and no weak spot on his person that Keith could exploit to kill him. He existed as something beyond the constraints of life and death.

Keith could not kill him.

But he would have to. And he would.

Keith grabbed his beer and jerked the can to his lips, letting its contents pour free and into his mouth. In a few short gulps he had finished the rest of his can, and reached for a new one. He felt Shiro’s eyes like crosshairs on his every movement.

“Don’t drink too much,” Shiro cautioned with some amusement.

“I’m not even tipsy,” Keith replied, and twisted under Shiro’s gaze. But rather than twisting away, he twisted towards him.

Shiro’s hand rested on the ground between them. Keith inched his own closer. When Shiro noticed he grabbed it, and wrapped it in his own.

Between Keith’s second and third beer, between two laughs in a moment of quiet contemplation, Shiro bent in towards his ear.

“Stay with me tonight,” he whispered, and squeezed Keith’s hand.

Keith swallowed, audibly.

“Okay,” he said.

* * *

 

When Keith touched Shiro, his hands shook. It was with butterfly softness that he ran his fingers the length of his cheekbone.

Shiro seemed to know instinctively what that meant. The smile that flickered onto his lips was serene and Keith was caught breathless for a moment. Like when his high school classmates had taken a bat to his ribs, but instead of bones cracking he heard his heart breaking instead, fracturing into so many pieces that when they fell to the floor they tinkled like glass raindrops. The ache spread from his lungs and his heart into his arteries, turning his limbs cold but fought by the heat of Shiro’s skin where he leaned into the faint trace of the pad of Keith’s thumb.

Shiro’s eyelids slid closed. Keith’s fingers became Keith’s palm, cupping at a jawline that begged to be bruised or begged to be kissed, depending on who you were. Both, if you were Keith. It relaxed under Keith’s touch, teeth ungritting. The fluttering shadow of Shiro’s eyelashes played skittish and coy under the seam of his eyes. The curve of his lips was lovely and lonely, inviting the company of another pair.

Keith shifted forward until he could touch the end of Shiro’s nose with the tip of his own. He let his hand stay where it was, but his eyes dragged down the height of Shiro’s face and then up again, observing and speculating.

“Well?” Shiro laughed, quiet and dark and husky.

So Keith kissed him.

Keith did more than kiss him. Keith pushed him back onto Shiro’s bed and swung his leg over his lap until their hips fell against each other, like a cog fitting against another inside a machine, making it work. Shiro’s hands landed at Keith’s hips. Keith found his own grabbing at Shiro’s back, cupping the base of his skull to still him into submission, so Keith could slide his tongue deeper. Shiro moaned into his mouth.

There was something gauzy about the state Keith found himself in when they fell horizontal. Shiro’s fingertips were peeking up under Keith’s shirt and brushing against the skin they met there, and the feeling of it chipped at Keith’s already crumbling self-control. Self-awareness. Somehow or another Shiro ended up above him, without a shirt, and Keith took the opportunity to familiarize himself with the defined muscles and the grisly lines of scars that shaped it. His beautiful tattoos snaked down his arms, over his shoulders, and across the broadness of his back. The sight of it made Keith’s breath catch in his lungs.

Shiro explored him thoroughly, inside and out. Worshipped and praised his body like it was his god. Shiro bit the skin of his throat raw until Keith was moaning under him. Kissed him til his lips bruised. Left the marks of his feeling all over his skin and branded a deep, probing warmth on Keith’s heart. And in turn Keith touched him, dragged his open palms over all his scarred skin, memorized the feeling of such a perfectly-shaped body.

When Shiro filled him it wasn’t just physically. Keith could feel the weight of his life cracking and dropping away in pieces, falling from his shoulders. For the first time ever he felt cared for and protected as Shiro touched him gently. This seemed to overflow within him until he was choking on it, between calls of Shiro’s name and the moans that were coaxed out of him by a talented hand and a lovely thickness deep inside.

Afterwards, Keith felt dizzy and light. Somehow he was smiling, and Shiro was smiling too, and their eyes locked, and Keith’s stomach swooped. Shiro looped his arms around Keith, and Keith nuzzled into his throat, and they pressed themselves together as their hearts slowed and their happiness bubbled up into their chests.

Under the pillow, the fingers of Keith’s right hand brushed against something cold.

It was right where he’d stashed it earlier. The callous handle of his knife. It didn’t know its purpose here. It couldn’t be blamed for existing even as Keith’s chest tightened. He shifted his weight, drawing in closer to Shiro.

“Something wrong?” Shiro murmured in Keith’s ear.

“No,” Keith replied, and kissed Shiro’s throat. He left his lips there for a moment to catch the pulse, to listen to the oxygen traveling through his windpipe and fill his lungs.

“Let’s get some rest, then,” Shiro said.

“Yeah.”

Shiro dozed, one of his arms around Keith’s waist. Securing them together. He didn’t stir as Keith moved, shifted, and brought the knife around Shiro’s back. He clutched it in two hands, blind in the dark, and held the tip in a hover near Shiro’s spine.

“ _I love you_ ,” Keith whispered, and briefly touched Shiro’s mouth with his own.

Knives don’t slide through flesh and bone easily. It takes some effort. Keith braced himself and closed his eyes, and wrenched Shiro towards him with the strength in his stab. He felt the knife bite through. Felt the resistance of a body unwilling to part with life. He steeled himself and tried to stop his hands from shaking. Tried to stop his eyes from filling with tears.

He pulled back the knife, and stabbed again. Hard, and swift, in the way he had learned was the quickest way to an easy death. Blood spurted out onto his hands, hot and thick. It coated him, and he shuddered in revulsion.

Shiro inhaled, a quaking gasp, a breath, and suddenly Keith couldn’t take it anymore.

When Keith touched Shiro, his hands shook. He let Shiro’s head slide from his hands onto the mattress, and ran.

 

 3.

Keith is barely inside the front doors before his arms are wrenched behind him. Two burly men box him in. There’s a loud click and the cold press of metal against the back of his head freezes him into place.

“Came crawling back, huh?” one of the guards jeers at him.

 _I was invited_ , Keith thinks sourly. But he doesn’t speak, and he doesn’t fight. A bullet opening his skull before the right time would render everything he’s done pointless, since the day he was left in the shambles that they called an orphanage.

So he’s jerked along, more roughly than necessary given his pliancy. In the hallway he’s patted down. They’re neither gentle nor respectful when they strip him of his largest guns. One cops a brazen feel of his ass, and Keith grits his teeth and endures.

“What were you trying to pull here?” the same guy sneers, tossing Keith’s revolver to the floor. It lands with a clatter against the wooden flooring.

Keith doesn’t answer. He keeps his eyes trained at a point above them, his chin high.

“Doesn’t matter,” another replies. “He’ll be dead or worse before the end of the night.”

Keith has no complaints about that. Provided his luck holds out enough for him to keep the blade he kept in his sock, the inconspicuous gun in a fold of his thick jacket. But they’re being very thorough. They’ve torn his bag off his back. Hands begin creeping around his ribcage, near where the last gun sits. Keith closes his eyes and prays as the brutal touches creep down, further, further—

A crash sounds out somewhere from the distance. Both guards stop what they’re doing and perk up to attention, looking around. Nothing is in immediately sight, so they turn to each other and shrug.

“Feeling a bit lighter now?” one asks Keith, and then with another nudge from the gun at the back of his skull he’s moving forward again.

Keith recognizes the room he’s brought to, only because Shiro had once, for some inexplicable reason, thought it was necessary to bring Keith on a grand tour of the main house. They’d come into this tatami-floored room towards the end of their tour and Shiro had gestured towards a beautifully lacquered table and the ornate cushion that sat behind it.

 _This is where Zarkon carries out internal business_ , Shiro had explained. _He sits there when he meets with people within the family._

He isn’t here now. Of course he’s going to make Keith wait on him. It feels like a final affront to Keith, and it takes some threatening prodding from behind before he’s in control of himself to settle onto his knees on the tatami. At least this gives him a chance to gather his thoughts and observe his surroundings, but things like waiting for others have never come easy to Keith. He would rather Zarkon just _be here_ so he could be done with it.

He counts guards. Two on either side of him. One with the barrel of a gun to his head. Zarkon may bring more. The walls are traditional _shoji_ paper, flimsy and thin, meaning really any place can be an escape if he tries hard enough. But bullets can tear through that as easily as a needle through cloth and it’s not as though Keith has an escape planned anyway.

He’s only left waiting a few moments before one of the doors on the other end of the room slides open. As he expected, a hulking bodyguard, shirtless to show off his intricate and vast tattoos, enters first. His eyes sweep the room, and his lip curls when they land on Keith, but he continues inside.

Then comes Zarkon. He’s dressed casually in a dark blue _yukata_ , like he couldn’t be bothered to even properly dress for Keith. Less layers to the skin, to the vital organs, Keith thinks to himself. Zarkon’s eyes are dangerous, and his lips are pulled down into his perpetual frown. He does not look at Keith as he enters, but instead makes his way to the cushion and sits on it without any trace of respect for his audience. 

There’s another two guards behind him but Keith isn’t paying much attention to them or the way they stand dutifully at the corners of the room. Instead his eyes are locked on Zarkon, whose head is inclined back, watching Keith with the same interest that one might watch an ant one was about to squash merely to see if its strength was as impressive as what you had heard.

“Good evening,” he eventually says when the silence has stretched long and thin between them. His voice is low and gravelly, and it churns something ugly and painful inside of Keith.

“Good evening,” Keith grits out anyway.

“Can I offer you something?” Zarkon asks. “Tea? Sake?”

Keith’s lips thin. “No thank you.”

Zarkon shifts his weight and leans forward, studying Keith further. “Alright, you want to cut to the chase then?” He folds his hands together on the table. “I know what you did.”

There is only one thing to which this could be referring. Keith stays silent. There’s no point in denying it. But if it’s so obvious Keith won’t confirm it either.

“And actually, I want to thank you for it,” Zarkon says. “We were just about to crack down on the moles in our ranks ourselves. But then you went and did it for us.”

Keith’s spine straightens like a bolt of electricity has passed up it. His shock must show on his face, because Zarkon grins.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Zarkon asks. “Your dear Takashi-kun...it seems that he was working for Altea from the start.”

Keith’s entire body flushes cold.

“No!” he snaps, and realizes he’s suddenly leaned up onto one foot when there’s motion in his peripherals. The guards handle their guns. “You’re lying!”

“I’m not,” Zarkon replies evenly. “It seems like neither of you knew each other as well as you thought you did.”

Shiro, an infiltrator. There’s no way. He’d been morally superior to every other member of the Galra, certainly. Kindhearted in a place where there was only cruelty. A speck of light against the darkness, the lighthouse calling Keith home. But a spy? Keith had only ever seen Shiro follow directions prescribed to him, staying faithful to the family, to Zarkon. Never once had Keith even considered, for a moment, that the Champion, of all people, was not loyal. And for him to be a member of Altea, the Galra’s rival group, to boot. If there was any group out there that Keith would call anything nearing just, it would be Altea.

That had been an amateur mistake. The first of many, many, many, and one that avoiding would’ve saved him severe unhappiness. Keith feels ill. He leans his weight forward, catching himself with a hand on the tatami.

Then he raises his head, feeling the hatred and anger coursing through his body as a flash fire in his veins, on his skin. The press of the gun against the back of his head has faded from his awareness, same as the menacing presence of the guards in the corners. All that exists now is Zarkon’s dark gaze, his smirk, his obvious delight in seeing Keith completely and utterly undone by himself.

Keith lunges. A gun fires.

Bizarrely, it isn’t a gun inside the room. They all realize this as they freeze, Keith poised on the balls of his feet with bent knees, the guards’ hands all on their weapons, Zarkon unmoved and unphased. Aside from him, everyone looks around as if they can see the origin of the noise from inside these walls. When it becomes immediately obvious that they can’t, the guards shift their stance.

The threat is no longer merely from the inside. Thuds of footsteps on wood echo through the hallway. Then shouts, and another gunshot. Something crashing. The splinter of wood.

Keith feels the shift behind him and doesn’t hesitate. He swings a leg out blindly behind him along the floor, catching the guard at his back unawares. He tumbles to the floor and hits it with a loud _thud_. Keith doesn’t waste a second in tearing the gun out of his hands and slamming the side of it against his temple. The guard sprawls against the tatami.

To his surprise he’s not instantly riddled through with holes. This is because the other guards are more concerned with the explosion that rattled the wooden frame of the house than a scrappy boy with a gun. He knows he doesn’t have the aim to take them all out with bullets before they get him, so he turns his gun on Zarkon instead.

Only to find Zarkon’s gun already pointed right back at him.

It’s not that Keith is afraid of dying. But Keith is afraid of dying before he can confirm that Zarkon is dead first. Even from here Keith can’t guarantee that his shot will hit. And the second his finger so much as inches on the trigger, he’ll be shot instead.

“It’s a shame,” Zarkon says. “You would’ve made a great member of the Galra.”

Keith snarls, something dark and low in his throat. “I’ll never be as heartless as you and your group.”

Zarkon laughs, loud and raspy, even as the house rattles. “That’s rich, coming from the hired assassin.”

“Let me shoot him,” one of the guards says from somewhere behind Keith. “Sir, we have to get you out of here.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” Zarkon barks, not taking his eyes off Keith. “I can handle this myself.”

The shouts come closer, and the footsteps, until the door behind Keith is thrown open. Keith doesn’t turn to look, but even Zarkon focuses his eyes over Keith’s shoulders to look. Someone behind Keith breathes heavily with exertion.

“Sir,” clamors the newcomer, breathless and panicked. “You have to leave. Altea is storming the house and overpowering the guards.”

Zarkon growls, low in his chest, and rises to his feet. “And how did they enter in the first place?”

“The—the—” The messenger’s voice stutters, and Keith can pick up the traces of fear in it. He’s heard people voices when they’re terrified of their imminent deaths enough times. “The Champion is with them!”

The room quiets. Keith’s gun clatters to the floor. He turns slowly, feeling for the second time in ten minutes like his heart is frozen in his chest.

“That’s impossible,” Zarkon says. “The Champion is dead.”

“Then it’s his ghost!” the messenger insists. “But he’s _here_!”

“I saw the blood in his sheets myself,” Zarkon says. “We went to his funeral.”

His quiet in the following seconds make Keith turn back towards him, and the stillness of Zarkon’s face chills him. Zarkon is glaring with a cold fury.

“ _You_ ,” Zarkon says.

He raises his gun. He fires.

 _At least,_ Keith thinks, _Shiro is here to finish what I started_.

This is in the instant before Keith is dragged to the ground. The bullet, which had never been intended for him in the first place, goes flying by above his head. There’s no more gunfire after that, and Keith realizes when he looks up that it’s because it’s dangerous from both sides in the presence of too many people in a small space with no cover.

He’s crouched against the tatami, and there’s a hand on his shoulder holding him down. When he looks up at who it belongs to, his throat constricts. His heart stops pumping blood through his veins.

Shiro. It’s Shiro. He sits over him with protective hold, though his gaze is not on Keith but rather on Zarkon. There’s a gun in his other hand, and his face is carefully blank, but his eyes read like anger.

Behind him are a crowd of men with their guns pointed into the room. _Alteans_ , Keith realizes. One wrong move from anyone here, and the entire place will turn into an inescapable firefight. The result is that everyone is very, very still and very, very quiet.

“Well played, Champion,” Zarkon says. “Bringing that boy in here to make me think you were dead. Joining Altea. Coming back when I least expected it. A good plan, and I commend you for it.”

Keith can’t breathe. Shiro is—Shiro is _touching_ him. Right now, Shiro is fighting, breathing, _living_ , right above him.

“I wish I could take the credit for it,” Shiro replies, his voice hard and low. “But Keith was never part of the plan.”

Keith’s name, on Shiro’s tongue. A sound Keith had never thought he’d hear again. His heart thunders against the tatami. Shiro hasn’t lifted his hold.

Zarkon laughs. “Just a useful opportunity then? How convenient.”

Shiro ignores him in favor of slowly, cautiously, releasing Keith. He stays watching Zarkon as he extends a hand down. Keith examines it for a moment before taking it. It’s his left hand, whole and unbroken. He can feel its warmth as he slips his own hand into it, and Shiro helps pull him up, and then together they rise to their feet.

“Are you okay?” Shiro asks quietly, still looking at Zarkon, who is watching the proceedings with an even expression.

“No,” Keith replies. Bewildered, forceful. How could he be okay? “What—how—?”

A small grin cracks Shiro’s lips, blink-and-you-miss-it. “I’ll explain later.”

No one has moved at all. No one will give an inch.

“Touching,” comments Zarkon, as though he finds it anything but. “Regardless, I’m afraid I’ll have to kill the both of you. Actually, this time.”

On an invisible cue, guns click. The sound is echoed instantly from the forces in the hallway. Keith’s heart jerks into triple time. How anyone in this room could possibly hope to escape this kind of close-range no-mercy shootout alive is beyond him. That goes double for himself and Shiro, caught in the center of the group, but for Zarkon, too.

To make matters worse, Keith is certain both sides likely have reinforcements on the way. This is going to be an all-out bloodbath. And though up until this moment Keith had felt no need for survival, with Shiro standing at his side, there is now suddenly an addendum to the goal of _defeat Zarkon_.

_Defeat Zarkon. Let Shiro live._

Keith failed that once. He isn’t about to do it again.

“You do realize your foolhardiness, don’t you?” Zarkon asks them. “Even if you manage to kill me, which I doubt you can, my forces will certainly kill you in response. You won’t make it out of here alive.”

“This isn’t about us,” Shiro replies. “This is about stopping your reign of terror on the streets of this city.”

Zarkon laughs, humorless. “As though I’m the only boss of a group around here. May I remind you that Altea is yazuka too? And you, Champion? How many innocents have you killed in your time with the Galra?” Zarkon’s gaze slides over to Keith. “As for you, you have no loyalty and kill for a living.”

The hand that clamps down on Keith’s shoulder is there before his impulse to jerk into motion and tear Zarkon’s throat out with his bare hands is even fully formed. It’s true what Zarkon said about him, but Shiro? Knowing Shiro’s personal morals and beliefs, and now aware of his position as a infiltrator within the organization, Zarkon had no right to compare Shiro to _anyone_ like him.

“You may be right,” Shiro says. “But that doesn’t mean I can allow you to continue as you are.”

His fingers tighten on Keith’s shoulder infinitesimally, and he raises his chin. Keith’s muscles contract.

“Lance?” Shiro calls.

Gunfire goes off. A round tear rips through the _shoji_ paper wall behind Zarkon. The guard to his left’s body makes a heavy _thump_ as it hits the tatami, blood already staining the reeds from a hole in his head.

A lot of things happen at once, then. Zarkon’s remaining guards close in on him protectively. The _shoji_ is littered with holes as they fire at the invisible threat on the other side. Shiro grabs Keith’s hand and yanks _hard_ , pulling him out into the hallway just in time for rogue bullets to come spraying after them. One of the Alteans goes down, but Shiro and Keith are sprinting away, their footsteps loud against the wood flooring.

Shiro pulls up to a quick stop when the sound of gunfire isn’t immediately behind them. There are more footsteps headed their way, so Keith’s legs itch to run, but he also doesn’t know why he was pulled _away_ from Zarkon if they have to kill him. Keith has to make sure that he’s dead. He’s about to open his mouth, and he can feel the onslaught of questions and demands and apologies dammed behind his teeth, but Shiro grabs him by both shoulders and speaks first.

“Keith, I’ll answer all your questions later,” Shiro says. “But right now I need you to make sure that Zarkon doesn’t get out of here alive. We’ll play distraction and watch your back.”

Keith nods once. “Okay.”

Shiro takes one hand off his shoulder to reach into his pocket. “You can use this,” he says, and presents Keith with an object that he never thought he’d see again. 

Breathless, Keith grabs his knife by the hilt. He tests its weight in his hand, and then slides it into the waiting sheath at his back. The prick of tears threatens the corners of his eyes, but now isn’t the time. He looks up into Shiro’s unendingly patient and understanding face.

“Thank you,” Keith says.

Shiro, as a reply, presses his thumb against Keith’s chin. Keith’s mouth yieldingly falls open, and Shiro puts his own lips there. _One, two, three_ , and the kiss is over, but Keith feels the fire of it burning in his veins. It’s finished too soon, but Keith’s already had a last kiss with Shiro once. He won’t let this be another.

“Go,” Shiro says, and releases him, just in time for a pair of Galra guards to round a corner and spot them. They both take aim to shoot, but Shiro is faster, firing at them over his shoulder as he gives Keith the chance to run back the way they came.

Surely Zarkon is on the move by now. Keith has no doubt that he’s still alive, and being trapped in that flimsy-walled room was a death sentence. As expected, when he arrives all the signs of the fight are still there, down to two corpses bleeding out on the ground. The _shoji_ is shredded, the table has been upended, and the tatami is soaked through with blood in places. But there are no more living people here. The fight has moved on.

It’s not hard to track it via noise. The whole building is a cacophony of crashing, gunfire, shouts, and running footsteps, but Keith understands that his target probably would’ve wanted to escape somewhere quiet. Zarkon is the sort to slip out the back while his lackeys deals with the mobs.

Using the bullet-riddled room as a starting point, Keith looks around. Going back into the house from here would have been dangerous, knowing that the halls would be patrolled by Alteans and Galra alike. Through the a crack in the paper doorway opposite, Keith can see the nighttime darkness. Beyond this wall is the porch, and that leads outside. Presumably, that’s where the gunman Lance had been stationed to gun down the guard from the outside. But there was likely only him, and he had probably fled as soon as he’d made that shot to avoid getting shot himself. Therefore, the open air seemed like a much better escape route than back through the building.

Keith tears across the room and slams the door open. On the other side, the night is dark. He can vaguely make out a traditional garden lying beyond in the light of the full moon, but no movement catches his eye. Zarkon could’ve gone _anywhere_ from here, but it’s impossible that he’s made it far since Keith last saw him. Keith jumps down into the garden to get a better look around.

The click of a gun cocking sounds behind Keith.

“I knew they’d send you after me,” Zarkon says.

Keith turns and finds Zarkon standing over him on the porch, his gun aimed straight for Keith’s chest. Rather than fear, Keith feels a flash of white anger.

“If I don’t kill you, Shiro will,” Keith snarls.

Zarkon just laughs. Laughs and laughs, derisive, maddening. “You’re both fools.”

There are more than a few things you’ve never supposed to do to someone with a gun in their hand. One of the biggest would be to run directly at them with the intent to kill them. But Keith has never heeded that list in his life. He charges.

The first bullet goes sailing past him, somewhere in the region of ear. Keith doesn’t flinch. He barely notices it go by. His vision has tunneled down to one thing.

The second bullet lodges in his right shoulder. It doesn’t register as pain. It registers as something that interferes with his velocity. It slows him down. He stumbles a step or two and continues forward, fluidly switching his blade to the other hand.

With Keith just steps away and the gun pointed straight at his heart, there’s no way that Zarkon will miss a third time.

At least he got this far. At least Shiro is alive.

_Bang._

Zarkon’s gun clatters to the ground. He staggers, clutching his arm.

Keith is on him in a second.

He gets no last words. He gets no chance to recover. Keith sweeps the knife across, slitting his throat in one easy motion.

After that, he looks up.

Shiro bleeds freely from a cut above his eye. He leans against the doorway in a way that betrays a bad leg. He’s holding a gun in his left hand. He’s smiling at Keith.

“Sorry,” he says. “I thought I’d hit him in the chest.”

“Shiro,” is all Keith says in reply.

The pain hits him at once, then, but so does the realization of who’s in front of him. WIth something like a sob, Keith launches forward and leaps into Shiro’s waiting arms.

* * *

 

“Keith." 

Everything is blurry, and all sound is like an echo without an origin. Keith moans.

“Keith, baby.” Someone is calling him. “You’ve gotta wake up. It’s time to go.”

His eyelids are iron, but at least is body is wholly numb. The last thing he remembers before being put under is pain, fiery hot, emanating through his veins from a throbbing in his shoulder. Now he can’t feel any of that. In fact, he can’t feel at all.

“The anesthesia may not have worn off yet.” This voice is different from the first. Clipped, and female, and spoken with a distinct tinge of _not from around here_. “He’s likely not going to be fully conscious for some time.”

Silence. And then, the mattress falls away beneath Keith.

“I’ll carry him,” the first voice says against his ear. “I’ve got it from here. Thanks for everything, Allura.”

The night air hits Keith, heavy with moisture and the sound of crickets. There’s an even gait beneath him but it’s not his own legs. His head rests against something solid and warm. He manages to crack an eye, and finds a sharp jawline before him, leading up to a handsome face and warm, serious eyes.

“Shiro?” Keith manages to mouth.

Shiro glances down and smiles at him. Soft.

“Go back to sleep, Keith,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

The next few hours are all blurred together. A car. Shiro’s arms again. Dawn. A loud rushing in Keith’s ears, and then a lifting, and when Keith wakes up it’s to the sky out of an airplane window.

He blinks once, twice, trying to make sure he’s not imagining this. And when he’s sure he isn’t, he turns, and finds Shiro beside him.

“You’re awake,” Shiro says softly, even though it appears that they’re the only ones on this airplane, beside perhaps a pilot in the front.

Keith’s never been on a private jet before. He doesn’t want to think about the innocent people who unknowingly funded this trip. He doesn’t want to think about this trip at all, honestly. Why is he here? Where is he going?

“The doctor said I needed two weeks of bedrest,” he says instead of addressing any of this.

Shiro grins, soft and only for him. “You’ll get it. Once we’ve landed in Hokkaido."

“Hokkaido.” Keith tries out the word on his tongue. He’s convinced, now, that he’s dreaming. This can’t be real.

“Sorry for whisking you away like this without asking,” Shiro goes on. “You can go back if you want. But I had to get you out of there. It isn’t safe for us anymore in Kyoto.”

Keith has no complaints about this dream scenario, though. Kansai was home, certainly, but his attachment to it lies only in the fact that he’s lived his whole life there. There’s a world beyond. And he’s always wanted to go to Hokkaido.

Anyway, he would follow Shiro anywhere.

“How are you alive?” he decides to ask Shiro. Dream or not, he wants answers.

“For a professional assassin, you didn’t do a very good job of killing me,” Shiro replies lightly. “You seemed a little emotional at the time and like you weren’t quite in control of what you were doing. I have a nasty scar and was out of commission for a few weeks, but you didn’t hit any vitals.

“I think maybe if I had really been sleeping I could’ve been caught off guard and bled out, but I knew who you were. I was expecting it.”

Keith, stunned into silence, forgets that this is a dream and blinks wide eyes at Shiro. “You _knew_?”

Shiro laughs. “I knew who you were from the moment I saw you.”

The thing that erupts in Keith’s stomach is tight anxiety. “You did?”

“Don’t look so nervous.” Shiro’s hand paints a trail of tingling warmth down the side of Keith’s face. “I don’t think anyone else did.”

Keith frowns. “You knew, then—”

“I knew,” Shiro says. “I knew they were going to send someone after me soon. And I knew about the most infamous assassin in Kyoto. When he suddenly appeared at my business I put two and two together.”

“But you didn’t _do_ anything about it,” Keith replies. “Why?”

Shiro’s hand settles comfortably on Keith’s shoulder. “At first I was surprised. You were acting more as a spy than an assassin. I didn’t know you did that.”

“I don’t usually,” Keith admits, looking down.

“But you were advertised the opportunity to off the Galra’s Champion, and take the organization down from the inside,” Shiro guesses, and waits for Keith to nod before continuing. “I thought so. It’s the same reason I was there, after all.”

“Is that why you didn’t rat me out? Kill me?” Keith asks.

“Part of it,” Shiro replies. “But also because you’re very attractive.”

Guilt stabs through Keith’s gut. “Shiro, I—”

“Shh,” Shiro interrupts. “You were doing what you thought was right. You had your sense of morality on your side, didn’t you?”

Keith’s hand finds Shiro’s thigh, and uses it to steady himself. He feels physically unbalanced by the conversation, as though the words themselves are weights sitting unevenly on his shoulders. He gives Shiro’s knee a squeeze and Shiro shifts closer.

“I can’t believe...and you _let_ me….”

Shiro puts his hand over Keith’s, and when Keith goes to jolt away Shiro holds his hand there. It folds gently under his strong grip.

“I know you’re going to feel guilty for a long time, but I want you to know you didn’t hurt me, Keith,” Shiro says. “At least nothing permanent, okay? And, if you couldn’t tell, it doesn’t change how I feel about you at all.”

Something hard creeps up Keith’s throat. He chokes on it, and it turns into words. “I missed you, Shiro,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

His jaw tightens.

“But why didn’t you _tell me_?”

Shiro smiles sadly.

When they get off the plane, rather than to a car, they end up at the train station. Keith is still tired, weak, dizzy, but Shiro supports him despite the stares they garner and carries the one collective backpack between them.

“Our stuff will be shipped to us later,” he explains when Keith gives it a look.

“I don’t have anything,” Keith admits, looking down.

“You left an entire motorcycle in front of Zarkon’s place,” Shiro says with a teasing grin. “That’s not anything?”

Keith gapes.

The train is quiet. It’s still early morning, and while the _clack-clack, clack-clack_ of the wheels over tracks muffles their conversation and wraps them in intimacy, the people seated around them are always listening.

“It was the plan,” Shiro says. “I was hidden away while I recovered, and I realized everyone thought I was dead. At the same time, Altea and Marmora had started talks to take down Galra.”

He’s huddled close to Keith, and Keith is huddled close to him, their voices quiet as endless farmland speeds by outside the window.

“I had all the passwords,” Shiro says. “The handprints. The floorplans. The guard rotations. Everything. And then, with Altea and Marmora teaming up, we finally had the power, too. We couldn’t afford an all-out war on the streets, but we made a plan.

“We needed a distraction,” Shiro goes on, “to pull the guards away from their posts.”

Keith’s eyes widen. “Me. But how’d you know I would be there?”

Shiro, instead of answering, tugs something out of his pocket. A cell phone. He quickly types out a message, hits send, and smiles.

Keith’s phone buzzes in the bag at Shiro’s feet.

He sucks in a breath as he opens it and fishes out his work phone. One new message, from a number not in his contacts.

 _Hey cutie_ , says the message when he opens it. It’s not the only one he has from the same number. The last one before that reads, _Zarkon wants you at the main house. Thursday. 8 pm._

Keith looks up from his phone. “Zarkon never called for me at all.”

“He was probably expecting one of his thugs to drag you in sooner or later,” Shiro replies, pocketing his phone again. “But I don’t think anyone from the Galra was prepared for you to just walk in there last night.”

Keith doesn’t have the brainpower to puzzle through all of this right now. He clutches his phone tighter, until his knuckles go white.

“You had my number.”

Shiro goes still, and very quiet. “I’m sorry, Keith.”

Keith bites his lip, and looks away. Outside, the sky is so blue over the open fields. Mountains in the distance cut gray jagged lines across it.

“Don’t apologize to me,” he says. “I killed you.”

“You didn’t, and I let you think I was dead.”

When they get off the train, it’s at a dinky countryside station. It consists of only one room, and they have to hand their tickets to the woman at the ticket window. She tells them to take care going home.

There’s a car in the parking lot. It’s sleek but understated, all glossy black paint and aerodynamic lines. It only stands out a little bit from the stout, boxy cars around it. Shiro offers the passenger’s seat to Keith. They pull out onto the main road with a quiet rumble of the engine.

Keith asks, “But why did you need me there?”

“To be honest, I didn’t want you there,” Shiro says. “I knew it would be dangerous, and that I’d be concerned for you. But Allura insisted when I told her about you.

“I knew that you could kill him. I wanted to do it myself. But you’re far more skilled with that blade than I’ll ever be with any weapon. I knew you could get it done, no matter what.”

Shiro reaches for Keith’s hand across the seat. When Keith doesn’t pull away, he gives a squeeze. His eyes are trained only on the road.

“I’m sorry for putting you in danger like that.”

“I don’t care about _that_ ,” Keith replies.

Between farmland, forest, and mountains, the coastline peeks out. Shiro notices Keith’s attention turn towards it, and takes the first exit he can. By the time Keith realizes what’s happening Shiro’s parking on a cliff that overlooks the rocky beach and its lapping surf.

Keith, though tired, gets out of the car and paces towards the water. When Shiro comes to stand behind him, he palms his work phone in his uninjured arm, and then winds up. He hurls it as far into the waves as he can.

They get back in the car and drive.

“My family’s place,” Shiro explains when they arrive at the house. It’s not new, but it’s been recently renovated. It’s tucked away into the woods at the edge of a small town. “No one’s lived here since my parents passed away.”

“We can stay here?” Keith asks.

“As long as you want to,” Shiro replies.


	3. 急

“Want some sake?” Shiro asks, reaching into the alcohol cabinet without waiting for an answer. 

Keith turns away from the window, from the snow piling up outside, certain to eventually block the door and muffle the world in silent white. It’s quiet. He can afford something like sake now. 

“Sure,” he says, and watches Shiro put on a pot of water to boil. 

Shiro pads over, footsteps softened by his house slippers, and leans down to press his lips against Keith’s forehead. It’s not enough. Keith fists his hands in the front of Shiro’s soft sweater and tugs him down, shoving his tongue into his mouth. It’s not until the bubbling of the pot diverts Shiro’s attention away that he rises. 

He turns the flame off. The sake decanter goes into the pot. He watches it carefully, and Keith rises to grab the cups from the cupboard. When he places the two on the counter, Shiro glances up. 

“Get the _sakazuki_ ,” he says, referring to the nice ceremonial cups. “And take out one more.”

“What?”

“One more.”

“Are we expecting someone?” Keith asks, but reaches into the cupboard again anyway. The three cups sit in a questionable line on the counter. Keith inspects them, and finds their number to be the only thing wrong with them. They’re stunning. Expensive. 

Shiro doesn’t answer, but brings the warmed sake over. He faces Keith, hip slotted against the countertop, as he pours. He fills one cup, and then stops, placing the decanter back on the counter. 

Keith looks up at him in question, but Shiro only grins and goes to pick up the cup. He takes a shallow sip, then tilts the cup back. Another sip, not breaking eye contact. Finally, he downs the rest of the cup. One, two, three. 

Oh. Keith’s heart breaks into a thunder as Shiro refills the cup. It has the same amount of sake in it as it did when he filled it for himself, its clear surface quivering as the last drop settles into it. He hands it to Keith, and Keith takes it, fingertips trembling. This is a wedding tradition. 

“We can go to Sapporo and get a partnership vow sometime if you want,” Shiro is saying, in a voice so low and soft it’s the stuff of nighttime snowbanks. “But I wanted to do this first.”

He looks up at Shiro and takes a deep breath. The back of his eyes sting. He raises the cup to his lips, and tilts it, gently, slightly. The liquid that pours into his mouth is warm and sweet. He sips again, and the alcohol burns the back of his tongue a little. On the third raise of the cup he drinks, letting the strong taste flood his nose, his tastebuds, and carry past the lump in his throat. 

The second cup is for him to drink from first. He can barely tear his eyes away from Shiro as he does, but he manages to catch a glimpse of the sake bottle behind him. It’s a daiginjo, in a familiar black bottle, a minimalist white label. Keith’s stomach swoops. Shiro’s been planning this. For a long time, probably. 

He reaches over and pours the next cup for Shiro. Shiro thanks him, and drinks. One two three. One two three. Three, the indivisible number. Three, and their souls are sealed. 

The last cup is filled. Shiro brings it to his mouth and closes his eyes, and Keith watches how his lips parts, how the muscles in his neck contract as he swallows. It’s the view of his unbreakable bond. 

Keith takes the cup. He holds it in his filthy hands as Shiro pours, but he’s not shaking anymore. He drinks once. He drinks twice. He looks into Shiro’s warm eyes, full of the light of affection and hope, and spills the last of the drink into his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
